Technology Reviews and Podcasts

Ghost Recon: Wildlands

It’s time to take on the world starring you, and three other random people that for some reason like to breathe heavily into their mics which makes you eventually mad at everything… but then you just start taking out your anger on your enemies with bullets spraying everywhere! Wait, what am I talking about again?

Ghost Recon. How I’ve missed you. The thing I’ve always loved about Ghost Recon is that the advanced technology and the 3rd person firefights have always been magnificent. No matter what you do, these games are tough to top. Here’s something new that we haven’t seen before in a military shooter, which is really what we’ve all been waiting for: 4 player online co-op. And let me tell you, this co-op adventure is amazing.

I’ll give you an idea on the premise of Ghost Recon: Wildlands. Basically there is a bomb explosion on a U.S. embassy in Bolivia and shortly after, an undercover agent that was working in the Santa Blanca Drug Cartel as the head accountant, was killed. After these events shortly passed, the Ghosts are sent in to take down the cartel and hopefully kill the leader of the cartel, El Sueno.

Does anyone remember Rainbow Six: Las Vegas 1 and 2? If you do, you’d remember that the co-op was incredible with taking down terrorists with one of your best friends while having the ability to have basically any customization of your character with any gun you’d like. The thing is, that’s basically what Ghost Recon: Wildlands is, but you now have three other random or best buddies playing with you. Now in this series of the Ghost Recon era, you don’t have every unlock for your weapons, but that’s okay. However, what is different about the guns is that you can virtually customize just about anything you want with them. For example, you can have a laser sight, foregrip, holographic sight, semi / full auto hair trigger settings, 50 round drum magazine, and a suppressor all on the same weapon. Heck, you can switch out a foregrip and put on a grenade launcher if you want, or put on a compensater for you muzzle for extra control and damage as long as you’re okay with going in guns blazin’. And because of this with being able to have two different primary weapons with a handgun of some type, you can play in any way you want. For example, you could have an MSR bolt action sniper rifle for your distance, have a P90 for your close encounters, and have your handgun as a back up or for your silent close encounter. You can even make it so that a weapon has 3rd person control every time you switch to it. Your MSR can be 1st person, your P90 switch back and forth from 3rd to 1st depending on the situation, and your handgun can be 3rd person for the close encounter stealth take-downs. It’s pretty incredible that your options are endless. What’s more, is that you can find all of the attachments and weapons as you explore the game while playing with your best buddies. The next best thing is that you can go through the game flying helicopters and planes, you can drive lots of different vehicles that some even have mounted machine guns, motorbikes, and you can even drive a tractor. A tractor, guys. A tractor. The really fun thing is, that even if the vehicle doesn’t have a weapon on it, those that are not driving can smash through the windows and start shooting at the bad guys. On top of all the fun, the map is gigantic! And not just gigantic, I mean, it’s Skyrim gigantic. And yes, there is fast travel capability so that you don’t have to always fly or drive for 5 minutes at a time. The nice thing about having the single player side of the game is that you can command those NPC’s for Sync shots that allow you to kill up to 3 hostiles at once without the player having to physically take a shot, which you can trigger by shooting or by holding the appropriate button. This is extremely useful for your stealth, or even for hard to kill enemies.

For all of you graphics fans out there, you’ll notice that Wildlands is probably one of the best graphical military shooters that you’ve seen. One of the reasons I say this is because of the weather mechanics. The thunderstorms are by far one of the most crazy amazing graphical things I’ve seen on any video game before in my life. And the night to day ratio is very well done by not having it change from night to day in just a few minutes, but that you can actually do what you want to do in the night or day time for if you want to be stealthy or just want to get in there and get things done. The lighting is also a huge deal in the this game. The lighting is one of the reason why the thunderstorms are so cool. But in the night, the lighting is done also really well. I also want to mention that your playable characters and friends look quite well, too. Most of the NPC’s and enemies look decent, but that’s only if you’re really paying close attention to them. They made those NPC’s look this way, I believe, because the feel of the game is really the environment and not the people. I think that this was a good decision since the environment is what envelops you in the game, not the NPC’s since most of the combat is distance, not quite up close.

Think about Ghost Recon: Wildlands as a mix of Rainbow Six: Las Vegas of customization, Tom Clancy’s The Division for gameplay (except you can go first person shooting in Wildlands on top of 3rd person), and Farcry / GTA for the destruction and also for the vehicles that you can take. But the thing is that the above explanation of what the game is does not completely tell you what you have when you play Wildlands. There are so many other little things that help you play the way you want to play. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a game allow you to incorporate so many things that I’ve been wanting in a game. Somehow, Ghost Recon: Wildlands does all of it, plus more.